


All Shall Find the Light At Last (All the Lonely People of the World)

by magelette



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:27:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magelette/pseuds/magelette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She studied in order to discover the secret, but maybe Jane was looking for the answer in the wrong places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Shall Find the Light At Last (All the Lonely People of the World)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sistermagpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermagpie/gifts).



Jane understood the dangers of anthropomorphizing, but the chalice seemed lonelier now than it had when she was a child. Though she barely remembered the hectic summer days when she and her brothers found the golden chalice, she would never forget the thrill of her fingers touching the cool gold, tracing the dirt-encrusted figures on the four panels. The chalice seemed like it had a purpose then, representing something bigger than the three of them -- bigger than Gumerry, even. Sure, the chalice had turned Arthurian scholarship on its head, as Jane had recently found, but she never got over the feeling that the chalice was meant for something, and that its purpose had somehow been served.

She knew that feeling all too well, these days. As the middle child, she was used to being the balance, the one centered in between Simon's pompous logic and Barney's dramatic passions. Even now, she took the middle road: scholar to Simon's barrister and Barney's artist. If they were to form that rhetorical triangle that Aristotle was so fond of, she knew she would end up as the ethos corner, and while that wasn't necessarily a bad orientation, it still seemed like the raw end of the deal. She knew she had surprised everyone by following in Gumerry's footsteps -- Barney was the one who had expected to be chosen as a squire at the age of eight, the one who flitted from passion to dream and back again. Jane had always been the ordinary one out of the three, neither flesh nor fowl, scientist or mystic.

Still, her fingers traced the letters that spelled out the wonder of her childhood: Gold chalice of unknown Celtic workmanship, believed sixth century. Found in Trewissick, South Cornwall, and presented by Simon, Jane and Barnabas Drew. This was her contribution to scholarship, bracketed, as always, by her two brothers, anchoring them together. This is what she struggled to live up to, a young woman in a field dominated by greybeards, neither Simon's stolidness nor Barney's brilliance to bolster her. Just an innate talent for languages and something of an understanding for inanimate objects. She recognized things for what they were.

Or who they were.

She went to Oxford because Gumerry had taught there, because Gumerry had unknowingly left her with a legacy. If someone had told her, at the age of twelve, that she would grow up to be an Anglo-Saxon scholar as her famous uncle once was, she would've laughed at them. Their old chum Will was the scholar. Barney was Arthur-mad. And everyone knew that Simon was the brains of the family. And yet, the moment she set foot on Oxford's hallowed grounds, she felt comfortable in a way that she only had around Gumerry. This was his world -- all she had left of it -- and in order to understand the enigma who had been her great-uncle, she had to live in it. Maybe, if she unraveled some mystery of the past, she would understand a bit more about Merriman Lyon.

"Visit it often?" The voice was soft, cool, familiar. She'd heard the understated amusement before, and so she wasn't too surprised to find a pair of blue-grey eyes staring at her from beneath a long brown fringe. One broad hand pushed back that fringe from his forehead in a gesture Jane knew as well as she knew the cup before her. Will Stanton.

"Someone should, to keep it from getting lonely." The words fell out of her mouth without a thought, and she found herself blushing. She'd known Will since they were children, and even then, he'd been remote and strange and oddly beautiful in his own way. Like Cornwall. Like Wales. Like the cup. And though they'd only seen each other a handful of times since childhood, it didn't surprise her that he was here, too. Of course he'd be at Oxford. Will's interests had followed the same arc as Gumerry's even when they were children; of course Will's life would mimic Gumerry's own.

"I didn't see you last term. One of the fellows mentioned a new student named Drew, but I just made the connection." No longer glaring down at her from a greater height, his round face relaxed and became Will again. "I was out in the field, otherwise I would've come to pay my respects."

"You're that far ahead?" Will wasn't much older than she was, and she was dismayed that they weren't still on the same track as they had been in school, complaining about the same deficiencies and discrepancies in curriculum in their annual letters back and forth. For all that Will was suddenly thrust back into her life, she found that she didn't want to let go of him again, not if that removed, aloof look would return to his eyes.

Will shrugged, blushing a little himself. "It was a side project. I was up in Wales with Bran. Remember Bran?"

She nodded. "Does he still have that royal chip on his shoulder?" She could taste the tart bitterness of her words. She and Bran hadn't parted well, that last trip to Wales. If Will was aloof at times, out of place in his large and loud family, then Bran was downright rude on occasion. The few times they'd all met since they were twelve, Jane had caught Will giving Bran the oddest looks: something like longing, tinged with regret. Bran would never leave Wales, the comfort of his remote mountains and cold landscape. Bran's eyes held that same secret knowledge that Will's did -- that Gumerry's had.

"Bran--" Will trailed off, uncertain now and entirely human. "Do you remember?" His eyes seemed to search hers for something. She hoped he found it.

"I would remember, if it would help," she answered honestly. "If I could figure out the puzzle--"

Will was her enigma. Will was her legacy from Gumerry, placed into her care to prevent that same pain that she'd seen in Gumerry's ageless dark eyes. Someone had told her, once, that she and Will were much of a pair in their youth and their vigor. She'd always known Will Stanton was special. Maybe something in him made her special by association, or because of that similarity.

"You're not quite like the rest of us, are you, Will Stanton?" The words felt familiar on her lips, though she didn't know why, and it was obvious that Will recognized them, from the way his eyes lit up.

He held out his hand to her, smiling that familiar, shy smile. "Not quite. But neither are you, Jane Drew." Turning away from the chalice, Jane took his hand, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the predestined next step. The missing piece of the puzzle.

Bran had given her a blue-green stone, once, small and insignificant in value. Neither of them could ever remember where he'd picked it up, or why it was important. For years, Jane kept it in her jewelry box. Sometimes, she'd take it out and contemplate it, small and smug and unwilling to give up its secrets.

That was why she'd decided on postgraduate studies, why she'd pursued and pushed her studies further and further until all she could do was follow in Gumerry's footsteps. There were answers out there in the world and she wanted to find them. Barney found peace in his art and Simon's restlessness was cured through endless wandering, but Jane wanted something more. Maybe Will was part of that answer. There had to be a reason for them finding each other again.

"Are we destined for each other?" she couldn't help asking as they exited the museum, hand in hand. "All of us, I mean? Simon, Barney, Bran--"

Will tipped his head in a way that reminded her of Gumerry, looking at her with that long, introspective gaze. "Once we were. Now..." She could tell he was thinking: how much to tell, what to reveal, what part of the secret to yield. "Now, we make our own destiny. If you'd like." He looked down at their intertwined hands, fitting together as naturally as could be.

"All shall find the light at last," she said, words bubbling up from a dream, from that secret knowledge that had haunted the edges of her reality since she was a child. Will's eyes gleamed at the words. "I think... I think I'd like that."

"I think it's time we were starting out," Will said in that solemn voice. "We've got a long way to go."


End file.
